


Playtime

by vanillafluffy



Category: Blade Runner (Movies), Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams
Genre: Becoming real, Gen, Reality, altering reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 22:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15760968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: The prompt was, "Any android/robot, reading The Velveteen Rabbit"...replicants count, right? This is the story of how a replicant named Becca becomes a Real Girl.





	Playtime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nagi_schwarz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/gifts).



When she rents the apartment, the landlord tells her to throw away anything the old tenant hasn’t taken. He’s old, it’s too much trouble, maybe she’ll find something she can use.

Becca, who hasn’t enlightened the old man that she’s a replicant, finds nothing of use until she enters the back bedroom. There she finds a shrine to some long-ago child--curtains with clouds and rainbows, identical to the bedding on the bed, a rag doll centered on the pillow.

She regards it thoughtfully, wondering what circumstances might had caused someone to leave so much behind.Natural-borns are a mystery to her--this room offers an opportunity to learn more about them.

On one of the shelves is an odd book--there’s a picture on the cover under the title _The Velveteen Rabbit_ \--a brown rabbit against a background of green grass and the rabbit itself is textured like velvet. Her innate curiosity aroused, Becca opens the volume.

When she closes it a few moments later (It isn’t a long story, and Becca has a nimble mind), she can’t help but draw parallels between herself and the titular character. Legally, she is no more real than the stuffed rabbit…but belief transformed it. Can it do as much for her?

Becca spends much of her time in the room, teaching herself to play. Occasionally, she feels a need for human companionship. Becca doesn’t expect to find anyone who will love her into reality--that seems unduly fanciful--but it feels good. Why shouldn’t ‘play’ include her physical self, too? It’s easy enough to find playmates in the entertainment district. Sometimes, they even give her money.

In the bins on the shelves, there are elongated dolls with vast wardrobes. Sometimes, as she changes them into different outfits, she wonders how she would look in them…they’re pretty. 

Her play with the dolls reflects her own concerns. Often the dark-haired doll who looks most like Becca is accosted by the fair-haired doll, who is a Blade Runner. An old battery is her Voight-Kampf machine. Sometimes Becca strikes down the Blade Runner and flees. Other times, she just flees. She’s afraid: To her, testing equals certain death.

The disciplines Tyrell Corporation instilled didn’t account for the binful of little bricks that snap together. She knows about engineering; now she demonstrates it by assembling fantastical creations by the hour. At the same time, she imagines building structures on one of the off-world colonies.

Every night when she’s at home--most nights--she reads _The Velveteen Rabbit_ before she turns off the bedside light, its base a carousel horse which begins to gallop through her dreams. When she first escaped Tyrell, her dreams were a confused mesh of her old jobs, blade runners coming for her, and having to take The Test. Now, she and her lovers picnic in the grass, make love as bunnies hop past. A horse with gilded trim bounds through the interview room, smashing the Voight-Kampf machine and carrying her away on its back.

“I need to ask you some questions,” the fair-haired doll says one day.

“I’m not afraid of your questions, because I’m a real girl,” the dark-haired doll replies. “That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing.”

The lunch rush has come and gone, and Becca is gratefully looking forward to the end of her shift at the little diner where she works. She’s having a ghastly day--the smell of hot grease is making her sick--and then the woman walks in.

She’s tall and fair-haired, as Becca had always imagined her. Long, perfect hair, careful make-up, a bright blue dress that clings to her curves….

“Becca Collins? Come with me. I need to ask you some questions.”

“In the middle of my shift?!”

“What’s going on?” Her boss comes out from the kitchen, reeking of grease, and oh god--Becca’s almost willing to go take The Test just to get away from it.

The blade runner explains that they have reason to think that Becca is a contract worker for Tyrell Corp who has deserted her assignment. He gives the fair-haired woman a look of skepticism. “Becca? Nah, she’s here every day, works her tail off--I don’t believe it for a minute.”

“Nevertheless….”

“Fine, fine. Becca, go answer their dumb questions. See you tomorrow morning, right?” He squeezes her shoulder and goes back to the kitchen.

The station house is bustling--apparently they’ve been carrying out raids looking for suspected runaway replicants. She’s lined up with a cluster of others and scanned.

“This one’s pregnant,” says the one with the scanner.

Pregnant? That would certainly explain her recent antipathy to the smells of cooking. A child…a child with her in the room, playing with the dolls and blocks, and Becca can read her favorite book aloud….

“It won’t affect the test,” says the woman in the blue dress, shepherding her into an interview room.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

Becca is relaxed. She isn’t focused on the dreaded machine or worried about the questions of the most important test of her life. She’s thinking of her new life ahead, of what she can teach her child, and wondering what she’d learn from it. She’s too busy being real to think about being real.

“Tell me only the good things you remember about your mother,” the other woman asks.

“She used to read to me,” Becca confides. The room is vivid in her mind, and she could recite _The Velveteen Rabbit_ from memory. “We’d snuggle together in bed before lights-out…I still have the rag doll she made for me. I’m going to pass it down to my child someday.”

The blade runner is looking intently at her. Becca smiles absently. If she’s going to start a family, she needs to fix her place up, to make it more comfortable/safe/educational. Her playtime is over. There’s a lot to do….

“Ms. Collins,” the fair-haired woman says finally. “You’re free to go. Thank you for your time.”

“Thank you,” Becca replies serenely. “That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing.”

 

…


End file.
